Evidence from ancient butchery site in Tanzania shows early man was capable of ambushing herds up to 1.6 million years earlier than previously thought.

Ancient humans used complex hunting techniques to ambush and kill antelopes, gazelles, wildebeest and other large animals at least two million years ago. The discovery – made by anthropologist Professor Henry Bunn of Wisconsin University – pushes back the definitive date for the beginning of systematic human hunting by hundreds of thousands of years.

Two million years ago, our human ancestors were small-brained apemen and in the past many scientists have assumed the meat they ate had been gathered from animals that had died from natural causes or had been left behind by lions, leopards and other carnivores.

But Bunn argues that our apemen ancestors, although primitive and fairly puny, were capable of ambushing herds of large animals after carefully selecting individuals for slaughter. The appearance of this skill so early in our evolutionary past has key implications for the development of human intellect.

“We know that humans ate meat two million years ago,” said Bunn, who was speaking in Bordeaux at the annual meeting of the European Society for the study of Human Evolution (ESHE). “What was not clear was the source of that meat. However, we have compared the type of prey killed by lions and leopards today with the type of prey selected by humans in those days. This has shown that men and women could not have been taking kill from other animals or eating those that had died of natural causes. They were selecting and killing what they wanted.”

That finding has major implications, he added. “Until now the oldest, unambiguous evidence of human hunting has come from a 400,000-year-old site in Germany where horses were clearly being speared and their flesh eaten. We have now pushed that date back to around two million years ago.”

The hunting instinct of early humans is a controversial subject. In the first half of the 20th century, many scientists argued that our ancestors’ urge to hunt and kill drove us to develop spears and axes and to evolve bigger and bigger brains in order to handle these increasingly complex weapons. Extreme violence is in our nature, it was argued by fossil experts such as Raymond Dart and writers like Robert Ardrey, whose book African Genesis on the subject was particularly influential. By the 80s, the idea had run out of favour, and scientists argued that our larger brains evolved mainly to help us co-operate with each other. We developed language and other skills that helped us maintain complex societies.

“I don’t disagree with this scenario,” said Bunn. “But it has led us to downplay the hunting abilities of our early ancestors. People have dismissed them as mere scavengers and I don’t think that looks right any more.”

In his study, Bunn and his colleagues looked at a huge butchery site in the Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania. The carcasses of wildebeest, antelopes and gazelles were brought there by ancient humans, most probably members of the species Homo habilis, more than 1.8 million years ago. The meat was then stripped from the animals’ bones and eaten.

“We decided to look at the ages of the animals that had been dragged there,” said Benn. “By studying the teeth in the skulls that were left, we could get a very precise indication of what type of meat these early humans were consuming. Were they bringing back creatures that were in their prime or were old or young? Then we compared our results with the kinds of animals killed by lions and leopards.”

The results for several species of large antelope Bunn analysed showed that humans preferred only adult animals in their prime, for example. Lions and leopards killed old, young and adults indiscriminately. For small antelope species, the picture was slightly different. Humans preferred only older animals, while lions and leopards had a fancy only for adults in their prime.

“For all the animals we looked at, we found a completely different pattern of meat preference between ancient humans and other carnivores, indicating that we were not just scavenging from lions and leopards and taking their leftovers. We were picking what we wanted and were killing it ourselves.”

Bunn believes these early humans probably sat in trees and waited until herds of antelopes or gazelles passed below, then speared them at point-blank range. This skill, developed far earlier than suspected, was to have profound implications. Once our species got a taste for meat, it was provided with a dense, protein-rich source of energy. We no longer needed to invest internal resources on huge digestive tracts that were previously required to process vegetation and fruit, which are more difficult to digest. Freed from that task by meat, the new, energy-rich resources were then diverted inside our bodies and used to fuel our growing brains.

As a result, over the next two million years our crania grew, producing species of humans with increasingly large brains – until this carnivorous predilection produced Homo sapiens.

A part of the original James Fort complex, newly found brick features date to the earliest years of the Virginia Jamestown colony.

Archaeologists have excavated two brick features in an L-shaped cellar near the first well of early colonial America’s 17th century James Fort. The cellar and the nearby well have both been dated to the earliest years of the famous Jamestown Colony (1607 – 1610), the early British-American settlement that is widely considered the “birthplace” of the American colonies and, by extension, that of the U.S.

The cellar measures about 25 feet long and is located in the area just west of the brick church tower and north of the previously found remains of the first (1608) church, aligning with James Fort’s first well, dated to the same time.

The first of the two structures emerged as archaeologists excavated in mid-July. This structure has been described as a brick “stack” with relatively precise mortaring. The second began to appear in August, about 10 feet away from the first. In contrast to the first structure, its bricks were in a disorderly pile, indicating a collapse.

In 2007, two similarly constructed features were excavated in what has been identified as a blacksmith/bakery cellar, located near the northwest bulwark of the Fort. Those features were detemined to be bread ovens, originally constructed in later years, or 1610 – 1611. According to Dr. William Kelso, long-time director of the excavations and head of research at Historic Jamestowne, the new structures in the L-shaped cellar may have been, like the bread ovens discovered earlier, used for cooking as part of a kitchen. He points to a large number of sturgeeon bones found within ash in front of the structures as a clue.

But, as fellow excavator Danny Schmidt has added, “We can’t be certain yet if the ash is from the building possibly burning down or ash coming from the brick features. If it is ash from the brick features, that ash would be an occupation layer, during the use of the cellar.” Associated ash was a defining find in the 2007 excavation of the blacksmith/bakery cellar. Moreover, the shape of a flue found in the L-shaped cellar looks similar to the flue also found associated with the ovens excavated in 2007.

The 2007 bread ovens featured brick façades with “turtle-shaped” spaces. Continuing excavations in the L-shaped cellar may reveal whether or not its brick features will show the same configuration.

Although only a third of the the L-shaped feature has been excavated, its fill has already yielded sherds of two Indian pots, an ivory ring, parts of a hammer and a pike, a bone handle to a knife, and many fragments of glass, lapidary, shell, and even some bone beads, among other finds. One of the bone beads is still wrapped in original fiber, indicating that it may have been used as a doublet button for clothing.

Topic Ancient Hunters
Finds from early stone age site in north-central Germany show that human ingenuity is nothing new — and was probably shared by now-extinct species of humans.

Archeologists from the University of Tübingen have found eight extremely well-preserved spears — an astonishing 300,000 years old, making them the oldest known weapons anywhere. The spears and other artifacts as well as animal remains found at the site demonstrate that their users were highly skilled craftsmen and hunters, well adapted to their environment — with a capacity for abstract thought and complex planning comparable to our own. It is likely that they were members of the species Homo heidelbergensis, although no human remains have yet been found at the site.

The project is headed by Prof. Nicholas Conard and the excavations are supervised by Dr. Jordi Serangeli, both from the University of Tübingen’s Institute of Prehistory, which has been supporting the local authority’s excavation in an open-cast brown coal mine in Schöningen since 2008. They are applying skills from several disciplines at this uniquely well-preserved site find out more about how humans lived in the environment of 300,000 years ago.

The bones of large mammals — elephants, rhinoceroses, horses and lions — as well as the remains of amphibians, reptiles, shells and even beetles have been preserved in the brown coal. Pines, firs, and black alder trees are preserved complete with pine cones, as have the leaves, pollen and seeds of surrounding flora.

Until the mining started 30 years ago, these finds were below the water table. The archeologists say they are now carrying out “underwater archaeology without the water.” Work continues almost all year round, and every day there is something new to document and recover.

Some of the most important finds of the past three years have been remains of a water buffalo in the context of human habitation, an almost completely preserved aurochs (one of the oldest in central Europe), and several concentrations of stone artifacts, bones and wood. They allow the scientists to examine an entire landscape instead of just one site. That makes Schöningen an exciting location and global reference point not just for archaeology, but also for quaternary ecology and climate research. A research center and museum, the “Paläon,” is to be opened in 2013 to to provide information to the public about the work going on in Schöningen.

By Manuel Villacorta is a nationally recognized, award-winning registered dietitian

Growing up in Peru, we ate many foods that you don?t see as often in the United States. Quinoa, for instance, was everywhere?we used it to feed both people and chickens! In recent years many of the foods I remember from a Latin American diet have become available in the US, and it turns out they have highly beneficial nutritional profiles. That they do should come as no surprise?many of these are the foods of the Incas, on which those great people built a vast empire. Today I want to introduce you to the five food wonders of the Incan world, and suggest you try them out for yourself.

The Incan empire is less familiar perhaps than the Romans, but it shouldn?t be; by the 16th century its borders extended from Machu Picchu in Peru north to Ecuador and south along the Andes through modern-day Chile and Argentina. The Incas had to manage a huge territory, including communicating across vast distances, so it?s no wonder they were known for their fighting skills, their endurance, and their strength. Clearly, they benefited from some good nutrition! In fact, with an empire whose beginning pre-dates the arrival of Europeans in the Americas, the Incas were fueled by a diet made up of nutritionally dense, New World foods. Here are five of them.

1. Quinoa: The Incas called this staple of their diet Chehisaya mama, meaning ?mother of all grains,? and yet quinoa is not actually a grain?it?s a seed. And what a seed it is: one cup of quinoa has 8 grams of protein, is high in calcium, protein, and iron, and is a good source of Vitamin C as well as several B-Vitamins. It is high on the lycine/thiamine system, so in combination with other grains it creates complete proteins. Best of all, it?s incredibly easy to make, and versatile to eat. Quinoa cooks in about 15 minutes with two cups of liquid to a cup of quinoa. (Check out my YouTube demonstration on how to cook quinoa.) Use it as a rice substitute in stir fries, pair it with fish and vegetables to make a complete entr�e, or put it in a salad or under a soup as a carbohydrate source. It?s even a breakfast food?boil it with milk, add walnuts and blueberries, and it?s a delicious alternative to oatmeal.

2. Kiwicha: You may already know this seed by its more common North American name, amaranth. It?s often called ?mini-quinoa,? but kiwicha is a much smaller seed. It is very high in protein and has a more complete profile of amino acids than most other grains, and it is rich in iron, manganese, magnesium, phosphoros, and copper?minerals essential to healthy physical functioning. Adding kiwicha to your diet can help decrease plasma cholesterol, stimulate your immune system, and potentially even inhibit tumors. It also improves hypertension and reduces blood glucose. In short, it can help support your body?s essential systems. Kiwicha is like quinoa in one other respect?how it?s cooked. Prepare just as you would quinoa or rice, and eat it in a pilaf-like salad. Delicious!

3. Pichuberry: This small, smooth fruit is known in Peru as ?Inca berry,? but it was so successfully spread by the Spanish after their conquest of the Americas that in Africa it?s known as the Africa berry, and in Australia it?s called a Cape gooseberry. Its health benefits are manifest: the pichuberry contains powerful antioxidants and twenty times the Vitamin-C of an orange; it boosts immunity and vitality, and there is even promising research suggesting it prevents cellular aging and the onset of cancer. In Peru it is known as the anti-diabetic fruit because it reduces blood sugar by stimulating the production of insulin. And its nutrient profile (Provitamin A, B-Complex vitamins, thiamine, nyacine, phosphoros) is associated with liver fortification, lung strength, fertility, and food absorption. It makes a great salad when paired with quinoa, tastes incredible with dark chocolate, and is a delicious replacement for blueberries on your morning oatmeal.

pichuberries

4. Sacha Inchi: These seeds of the Inchi plant are often called Inca-peanuts, and they are one of the best plant sources for the Omega family of fatty acids. With 48% Omega-3, 36% Omega-6, and rich supplies of Iodine, Vitamin A, and Vitamin E, the Inca-peanut has major health benefits in terms of restoring your lipid balance, encouraging the production of HDL (high-density lipoprotein, responsible for transporting lipids through your bloodstream), and fighting conditions like heart disease and diabetes. You can certainly eat Sacha Inchi like you would other nuts, but you might prefer to buy the oil and use it to dress salads in place of olive oil (with its low burning-point, it is somewhat tricky to use as a cooking oil).

5. Purple Potatoes: Potatoes are a remarkably diverse and nutritious New World food?in Peru there are over 3,000 kinds! The one that was particularly eaten by the Incas was the purple potato, which has started to appear in North American supermarkets. The anthocyanins in the potatoes give them their distinctive purple/blue color; these natural chemicals are flaminoids?substances with powerful anti-cancer and heart protective effects. Flaminoids also stimulate the immune system and protect against age-related memory loss. These potatoes are delicious, with a distinctive nutty, earthy, slightly bitter flavor. I prefer to roast them: I use a pump mister filled with olive or peanut oil?not an artificial cooking spray?to lightly spritz the quartered potatoes, which I then spread in a roasting pan, sprinkle with kosher salt and a little garlic powder or Italian seasonings, and roast for about 15 minutes at 400 degrees. Once the potatoes are cooked they are a great carb source for a variety of meals; I make a batch on Sunday, and use them through the week scrambled with eggs for breakfast, in a salad for lunch, or reheated with chicken or fish for dinner.

All of these delicious foods have begun making an appearance in North American supermarkets, and are still in the fully natural, nutritious state they were in when they sustained the Incas through the building of a great empire. Try them out. Your health and your taste buds will thank you.

ARCHAEOLOGISTS surveying the world’s most northerly Roman fort have found an ancient pub.

The discovery, outside the walls of the fort at Stracathro, near Brechin, Angus, could challenge the long-held assumption that Caledonian tribes would never have rubbed shoulders with the Roman invaders.

Indeed, it lends support to the existence of a more complicated and convivial relationship than previously envisaged, akin to that enjoyed with his patrician masters by the wine-swilling slave Lurcio, played by comedy legend Frankie Howerd, in the classic late 1970s television show Up Pompeii!.

Stracathro Fort was at the end of the Gask Ridge, a line of forts and watchtowers stretching from Doune, near Stirling.

The system is thought to be the earliest Roman land frontier, built around AD70 – 50 years before Hadrian’s Wall.

The fort was discovered from aerial photographs taken in 1957, which showed evidence of defensive towers and protective ditches. A bronze coin and a shard of pottery were found, but until now little more has been known about the site.

Now archaeologists working on “The Roman Gask Project” have found a settlement outside the fort – including the pub or wine bar. The Roman hostelry had a large square room – the equivalent of a public bar – and fronted on to a paved area, akin to a modern beer garden.

The archaeologists also found the spout of a wine jug.

Dr Birgitta Hoffmann, co-director of the project, said: “Roman forts south of the Border have civilian settlements that provided everything they needed, from male and female companionship to shops, pubs and bath houses.

“It was a very handy service, but it was always taught that you didn’t have to look for settlements at forts in Scotland because it was too dangerous – civilians didn’t want to live too close.

“But we found a structure we think could be identifiable as the Roman equivalent of a pub.

“It has a large square room which seems to be fronting on to an unpaved path, with a rectangular area of paving nearby.

“We found a piece of highquality, black, shiny pottery imported from the Rhineland, which was once the pouring part of a wine jug. It means someone there had a lot of money. They probably came from the Rhineland or somewhere around Gaul.”

She added: “We hadn’t expected to find a pub. It shows the Romans and the local population got on better than we thought.

“People would have known that if you stole Roman cattle, the punishment would be severe, but if they stuck to their rules then people could become rich working with the Romans.”

For the first time, archaeologists have determined the perimeter of the fort, which faced north-south. The team discovered the settlement and pub using a combination of magnetometry and geophysics without disturbing the site.

The ancient builders of Stonehenge may have had a surprisingly meaty diet and mobile way of life. Although farming first reached the British Isles around 6,000 years ago, cultivation had given way to animal raising and herding by the time Stonehenge and other massive stone monuments began to dot the landscape, a new study finds.

Agriculture’s British debut occurred during a mild, wet period that enabled the introduction of Mediterranean crops such as emmer wheat, barley and grapes, say archaeobotanists Chris Stevens of Wessex Archaeology in Salisbury, England, and Dorian Fuller of University College London. Farming existed at first alongside foraging for wild fruits and nuts and limited cattle raising, but the rapid onset of cool, dry conditions in Britain about 5,300 years ago spurred a move to raising cattle, sheep and pigs, Stevens and Fuller propose in the September Antiquity.

With the return of a cultivation-friendly climate about 3,500 years ago, during Britain’s Bronze Age, crop growing came back strong, the scientists contend. Farming villages rapidly replaced a mobile, herding way of life.

Many researchers have posited that agriculture either took hold quickly in Britain around 6,000 years ago or steadily rose to prominence by 4,000 years ago. In either case, farmers probably would have assembled Stonehenge, where initial work began as early as 5,500 years ago, with large stones hauled in around 4,400 years ago (SN: 6/21/08, p.13).

But if Stevens and Fuller’s scenario of British agriculture’s ancient rise, demise and rebirth holds up, then small groups of roaming pastoralists collaborated to build massive, circular stone and wood structures, including Stonehenge. Shifts from farming to pastoralism, sometimes accompanied by construction of stone monuments, occurred around the same time in parts of Africa and Asia, the researchers say.

“Part of the reason why pastoralists built monuments such as Stonehenge lies in the importance of periodic large gatherings for dispersed, mobile groups,” Fuller says. Collective meeting spots allowed different groups to arrange alliance-building marriages, crossbreed herds to boost the animals’ health and genetic diversity and hold ritual feasts. At these locations, large numbers of people could be mobilized for big construction projects, Fuller suggests.

“A predominantly pastoralist economy in the third millennium B.C. accords well with available evidence and provides a suitable backdrop to the early development of Stonehenge,” says archaeologist Timothy Darvill of Bournemouth University in England. But he believes many large stones were brought to Stonehenge during a later upswing in cereal cultivation, as pastoralism receded in importance.

Stevens and Fuller compiled data on more than 700 cultivated and wild food remains from 198 sites across the British Isles whose ages had been previously calculated by radiocarbon dating. A statistical analysis of these dates and associated climate and environmental trends suggested that agriculture spread rapidly starting 6,000 years ago. About 700 years later, wild foods surged in popularity and cultivated grub became rare.

Several new crops — peas, beans and spelt — appeared around 3,500 years ago, when storage pits, granaries and other features of agricultural societies first appeared in Britain, Stevens and Fuller find. An influx of European farmers must have launched a Bronze Age agricultural revolution, they speculate.

Stevens and Fuller’s analysis offers only a general breakdown of how farming and pastoralism developed in Britain, asserts archaeologist Alasdair Whittle of Cardiff University in Wales. The scale of cultivation, even during times characterized by relatively abundant remains of domesticated plants, remains uncertain, Whittle says.

According to Eli Shukron, excavation director on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority, “It is now absolutely clear that the Jerusalem’s water consumption during the First Temple period was not solely based on the output of the Gihon Spring, but that it also relied on public reservoirs”

A large rock-hewn water reservoir dating to the First Temple period was discovered in the archaeological excavations that are being conducted in the Jerusalem Archaeological Garden at the foot of Robinson’s Arch. The excavations at the site are being carried out by the Israel Antiquities Authority, underwritten by the Ir David Foundation and in cooperation with the Nature and Parks Authority.

The impressive reservoir will be presented today (Thursday) together with other finds from this past year at the 13th annual conference on the “City of David Studies of Ancient Jerusalem” to be held in Jerusalem.

The excavation, during the course of which the reservoir was discovered, is part of an archaeological project whereby the entire drainage channel of Jerusalem dating to the Second Temple period is being exposed. The channel runs north along the City of David spur, from the Siloam Pool to a point beneath Robinson’s Arch. The route of the channel was fixed in the center of the main valley that extends from north to south the length of the ancient city, parallel to the Temple Mount. In his description of Jerusalem in the Second Temple period, Josephus refers to the valley by its Greek name “Tyropoeon”, which scholars believe means “Valley of the Cheese-makers”. Another interpretation identifies the valley with the “Valley of the Decision”, mentioned in the Book of Joel.

It became apparent while excavating the channel that during the construction of this enormous engineering enterprise its builders had to remove earlier structures that were situated along the route of the channel and “pass through” existing rock-hewn installations that were located along it. An extraordinary installation that was exposed in recent weeks is a large water reservoir treated with several layers of plaster, which probably dates to the First Temple period.

The reservoir has an approximate capacity of 250 cubic meters and is therefore one of the largest water reservoirs from the First Temple period to be discovered so far in Jerusalem, and this was presumably a reservoir that was used by the general public.

According to Eli Shukron, the excavation director on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority, “While excavating beneath the floor of the drainage channel a small breach in the bedrock was revealed that led us to the large water reservoir. To the best of our knowledge this is the first time that a water reservoir of this kind has been exposed in an archaeological excavation. The exposure of the current reservoir, as well as smaller cisterns that were revealed along the Tyropoeon Valley, unequivocally indicates that Jerusalem’s water consumption in the First Temple period was not solely based on the output of the Gihon Spring water works, but also on more available water resources such as the one we have just discovered.

According to Dr. Tvika Tsuk, chief archaeologist of the Nature and Parks Authority and an expert on ancient water systems, “The large water reservoir that was exposed, with two other cisterns nearby, is similar in its general shape and in the kind of plaster to the light yellow plaster that characterized the First Temple period and resembles the ancient water system that was previously exposed at Bet Shemesh. In addition, we can see the hand prints of the plasters left behind when they were adding the finishing touches to the plaster walls, just like in the water reservoirs of Tel Be’er Sheva, Tel Arad and Tel Bet Shemesh, which also date to the First Temple period”. Dr. Tsuk says, “Presumably the large water reservoir, which is situated near the Temple Mount, was used for the everyday activities of the Temple Mount itself and also by the pilgrims who went up to the Temple and required water for bathing and drinking”.

The exposure of the impressive water reservoir that lies below Robinson’s Arch joins a series of finds that were uncovered during recent excavations in this region of the city, indicating the existence of a densely built-up quarter that extended across the area west of the Temple Mount and predating the expansion of the Temple Mount. It seems that with the expansion of the Temple Mount compound to the west and the construction of the public buildings and the streets around the Temple Mount at the end of the Second Temple period, the buildings from the First Temple period and early Second Temple period were dismantled in this region and all that remains of them is a series of rock-cut installations, among them the hewn water reservoir.

According to Dr. Yuval Baruch, archaeologist in charge of the Jerusalem Region of the Israel Antiquities Authority, “Upon completion of the excavations along the route of the drainage channel, the IAA will examine possibilities of incorporating the impressive water reservoir in the planned visitors’ path”.